Second hottest November in the UAH record

For the lower troposphere, November was the second hottest in the record (which goes back to 1979 for a full year). This means that 2014 is on track to be the third hottest year in the UAH lower troposphere temperature record.

For some reason, 1998 was recorded as the hottest year in the record, followed by 2010. The lower troposphere record seems to amplify the peaks and the troughs much more so than surface temperature records do. The trends are similar, it's just that UAH has higher highs in the hottest years and lower lows in the coolest years.

Here's a chart showing the annual temperature and the record for November for UAH. The annual average includes 2014 averaged to November. The only year where there was a hotter November was 2009.

As you can see, the annual average has increased a bit with the addition of the November data. The trend has also increased marginally to 0.139°C a decade.

Regional differences

As usual, the data at WUWT is shown as monthly rather than annual. The purpose is, I guess, to hide the signal of warming in among the noise of month to month data. It's not hidden in the text, however. From the WUWT article:

November 2014 was the second warmest November in the 36-year global satellite temperature record, according to Dr. John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

With a global average temperature that was 0.33 C (about 0.60 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than seasonal norms, November 2014 trailed only November 2009, which averaged 0.39 C (about 0.70 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than seasonal norms.

The report from UAH also discussed regional differences, with the fastest warming in the high northern latitudes and with the Northern Hemisphere warming more than twice as fast as the southern, according to UAH:

That warming has not, however, been uniform around the globe. The fastest warming has been over the Arctic Ocean and the Arctic portions of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Those areas have warmed at the rate of 0.49 C per decade, or more than 1.76 C (about 3.17 degrees Fahrenheit) in 36 years. The fastest warming spot is in Baffin Bay, where temperatures have risen 0.82 C per decade since 1978.

By comparison, the oceans surrounding the Antarctic are cooling at the rate of 0.02 C per decade, or 0.07 C since December 1978. The fastest cooling area is in East Antarctica near Dome C, where temperatures have been dropping at the rate of 0.50 C per decade.
Driven in part by those contrasting regions, the Northern Hemisphere is warming more than twice as fast as the Southern Hemisphere (0.19 C per decade vs. 0.09 C per decade).

The contiguous 48 U.S. states have an average warming rate of 0.22 C (almost 0.40 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade during the past 36 years. That means the average atmospheric temperature over the lower 48 has warmed by 0.79 C or about 1.43 degrees Fahrenheit during that time. Archived color maps of local temperature anomalies are available on-line at: http://nsstc.uah.edu/climate/

From the WUWT comments

For some reason, a lot of deniers at WUWT don't seem to realise what's happening this year. That this year is a very hot year. They are still in the throes of denial.

Robert B says there is zero warming. He's fallen for the trick of showing monthly data without annual, and he doesn't know how to read a chart.

December 3, 2014 at 1:37 pm
The rate of warming for the first 15 years is essentially zero. The rate of warming for the last 15 years is essentially zero. Its only the fudging of the thermometer record that makes it look like a century long warming rather than oscillating with maybe a smaller natural warming over the past 200 years.

No-one at WUWT bothers to correct him. Robert is probably looking at the chart from WUWT as shown below.

All he can see is that the bits for the first half of the period are mostly blue and the bits for the second half of the period are mostly red. Then he reckons that both halves are zero so that means it hasn't got hotter. He's wrong on all counts. He doesn't know how to read a chart. He cannot see that the temperature has been rising. That the zero line is simply a baseline of the average for the period 1981-2010. That in both halves of the chart the temperatures have been rising, as you can see more clearly in the annual charts above. The annual trend is 0.139°C a decade for lower troposphere temperatures since 1979.

joelobryan asks what causes weather. Or maybe why the air above the land masses warms and cools faster than the oceans. I'll hand over to some young high school students (and a meteorologist) to answer that question.

December 3, 2014 at 10:56 am
Questions comes to mind:
1. Short-term linear trends in pseudo-sinusoidal data means what?????
2. Given that CO2 is considered “well-mixed” throughout the troposphere and lower stratosphere, and IF CO2 was the climate control knob, why all the regional variability?

DD More is one of several who want to try to fit a sinusoidal shape onto the data, and doesn't succeed. He might be an ice age comether. If so he's in for a surprise.

December 3, 2014 at 3:12 pm
November 2014 was the second warmest November in the 36-year global satellite temperature record,
pseudo-sinusoidal data, like the 60 year PDO and 60-80 year AMO just may affect temperatures. And 2014 less 36 = 1978 which was the bottom of the ‘New Ice Age Coming’ scare.

SAMURAI decides to set an impossible goal before he'll "believe". He doesn't accept natural variability in the month to month weather.

December 3, 2014 at 6:33 pm (excerpt)
...The only way CAGW can still be taken seriously is if global temp trends suddenly and miraculously start tracking CAGW projections for the next 85 straight years, starting from next month:

Wayne Delbeke confuses diurnal and seasonal temperature variations where he lives, with temperature changes over the entire earth. And anyway, maybe it's getting less cold rather than getting more warm!

December 3, 2014 at 6:41 pm
It has warmed some over some period. Why? Does it matter? Why all the knashing of teeth and generation of theories over such a small warming, that in any case, is likely a net benefit to society as a whole. Living in a place that has swings of 20 degrees C in a day makes it hard to get real hard to worry about 15/100ths of a degree per decade. My question is how much of this change is due to LESS COOL weather than more warm weather? It hasn’t changed the need to clear ice off my water troughs in the winter, nor do I run my air conditioning anymore than a few days in the summer. The discussion is interesting but it sometimes seems to be much ado about nothing … well actually much ado about the wrong things. I think there are more pressing world issues that are being sacrificed on the altar of CAGW.

Deniers are fickle. Jeff Alberts has decided he doesn't even like UAH reports any more. There's not much left for him to choose from.

1 comment:

"All he can see is that the bits for the first half of the period are mostly blue and the bits for the second half of the period are mostly red."

To a Wutter all this signifies is that the evil warmists have used two different colour pens in order to alarm people. Different colour pens are mandatory on hockey sticks, but distinctly unwelcome elsewhere.

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